Why should we care about what's happening in the Arctic?

What is it about?

Scientists have long agreed that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would cause higher temperatures all over the world. It has taken a lot of time and effort to gather the evidence to test and prove this. It was thought possible that global warming could be caused by natural changes rather than human activity. However, by 1990, scientists had shown that human activity is a major cause of climate change. In that year, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that human activities were increasing the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that this was causing temperature increases. The Arctic has been strongly affected by these changes. One reason for this is something called the ‘albedo effect’, which doubles the effect of global warming. First, the warmer atmosphere causes more sea ice to melt. Because ice is a light colour, it reflects heat. Less ice means the earth is less able to reflect heat. So the effect is doubled as the atmosphere reflects less heat and becomes even warmer – causing more sea ice to melt – and so on.

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Photo by Hans-Jurgen Mager on Unsplash

Photo by Hans-Jurgen Mager on Unsplash

Why is it important?

One of the reasons people can deny climate change is that patterns in things like temperature and sea ice go up and down. Something like a volcanic eruption can temporarily reverse the overall pattern, so that it looks like the earth is cooling rather than warming. Scientists have to collect lots of data over long time periods, and keep comparing between different sources of information. Even collecting good data is not enough. The earliest evidence of climate change was missed due to poor analysis, arguments between scientists, and a lack of scientific vision. Scientists have to keep looking for new ways to analyze and understand the data they collect. In the Arctic, they needed to look at more than just how much sea ice was melting each year. They began to look at the different temperatures at different levels of the sea. Several expeditions in the 1990s measured sea temperatures and gradually scientists realized that not only was the ice melting, but the sea was getting warmer. One effect of this was more storms. KEY TAKEAWAY: Scientists in the Arctic gradually gathered the evidence to show there was cause-and-effect between the sea ice melting, the sea getting warmer, and more storms. We need to take this evidence seriously because what happens in the Arctic tends to then happen more widely across our planet.